Which video grabbing software

[DanceswithUnix]

My son wants to film his game playing, like you see of gameplay on youtube. I looked at FRAPS which sounds like it will do the job for a small cost. It looks like Nvidia Experience could do the job as well if he didn't have such an old card, and if I alter my plans for updating graphics cards the cost of FRAPS could go towards a gtx750 or simlar (he doesn't even need the ti version really).

Anyone know any other good options? Ones that cost money are fine, given that my two options so far are looking to cost me money.

[kalniel]

We use Camtasia for work sometimes:
http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html

[DanceswithUnix]

Wow, that looks nice but rather costly for what might end up as a fad he isn't interested in next month

I think I might be getting a plan. My wife has an MSI graphics card, and it looks like Afterburner can record video if you have an MSI card. http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/overview.htm

So I get a new card for the wife, my son gets an upgrade that does his recording. Anyone tried that feature in afterburner?

[GeorgeStorm]

I don't think you need a MSI card, since you can use the software with any nvidia gpu (that is supports, which is most)

OBS is worth looking into as another free option

[herulach]

If its already an old system, then depending the types of games he's using you might find it has a significant performance hit. I've only experimented with shadowplay which is supposedly 'for free' performance wise, and I get a very noticeable performance hit in some games (Notably BF4, which goes from 60-70fps down to around 40).

Before spending any money I'd test it out with the free version of fraps.

Depending what he's streaming (kid on older hardware I'm thinking minecraft?) You might also want to look into twitch, it will archive for about 30 days after broadcast, and they can be downloaded with anything that will pull down youtube vids afterward.

[DanceswithUnix]

OBS looks *very* interesting, might give that a try tonight.

[DanceswithUnix]

If its already an old system, then depending the types of games he's using you might find it has a significant performance hit. I've only experimented with shadowplay which is supposedly 'for free' performance wise, and I get a very noticeable performance hit in some games (Notably BF4, which goes from 60-70fps down to around 40).

Before spending any money I'd test it out with the free version of fraps.

Depending what he's streaming (kid on older hardware I'm thinking minecraft?) You might also want to look into twitch, it will archive for about 30 days after broadcast, and they can be downloaded with anything that will pull down youtube vids afterward.

I think he wants to start with Minecraft and Portal. I would hope a 955BE would be enough grunt to get him going, though the old 8800GT might be tricky.

I notice Minecraft has twitch streaming built in, but if he wants a webcam super imposed on top then that OBS looks good for that.

Lots of interesting ideas here, thanks guys.

[herulach]

I think he wants to start with Minecraft and Portal. I would hope a 955BE would be enough grunt to get him going, though the old 8800GT might be tricky.

I notice Minecraft has twitch streaming built in, but if he wants a webcam super imposed on top then that OBS looks good for that.

Lots of interesting ideas here, thanks guys.

Twitch does webcam ontop, and will quite happily stream most source engine games as well Give them both a crack.

[DanceswithUnix]

With twitch do you *have* to stream? I like the idea of recording, I sometimes have difficulty keeping the internet connection within the monthly limit so if it is streaming he could only really use it at weekends when the internet connection is uncapped.

[GeorgeStorm]

With twitch do you *have* to stream? I like the idea of recording, I sometimes have difficulty keeping the internet connection within the monthly limit so if it is streaming he could only really use it at weekends when the internet connection is uncapped.

I didn't realise twitch had it's own recording software, it's a streaming site, so if they do I would imagine you have to stream yes.
Lots of programs have integrated twitch streaming as well or you can just choose to save locally (such as OBS).

[Goobley]

I just tested out OBS (have used DXtory a lot in the past in conjunction with OBS - dxtory is great but costs ~£23). I ran the same level of portal 2 three times, once with no recording, once at 1Mbps and once at 4Mbps. No recording allowed me to get baseline load for my CPU/GPU. The GPU load did not change regardless of OBS (I know it's a 670 which is a far cry from an 8800 but still), and remained at 25% TDP consuming the same power according to GPU-Z, this was the same for both video qualities. The 1Mbps video at 1080p was horribly artifacted but had a very smooth framerate. The 4Mbps can be seen here ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75i4V...ature=youtu.be ) and has a few dropped frames, due to HDD load with the game runningoff and recording onto the same drive. With both of these the CPU utilization increased by 10% over the baseline run. So a 955 should be able to eat such a load (I'm only running a Haswell i3 the difference is far from large).

All in all I'd say that OBS is a decent way to go - especially for the buy-in cost! It probably wants a bit more fiddling with bitrates and recording to a different codec like lagarith lossless rather than h.264 all of which OBS supports very easily. Depending on the length of the recordings and the ram available, you could probably have a setup where the files are buffered via a ramdisk to prevent HDD saturation.

[DanceswithUnix]

I just tested out OBS (have used DXtory a lot in the past in conjunction with OBS - dxtory is great but costs ~£23). I ran the same level of portal 2 three times, once with no recording, once at 1Mbps and once at 4Mbps. No recording allowed me to get baseline load for my CPU/GPU. The GPU load did not change regardless of OBS (I know it's a 670 which is a far cry from an 8800 but still), and remained at 25% TDP consuming the same power according to GPU-Z, this was the same for both video qualities. The 1Mbps video at 1080p was horribly artifacted but had a very smooth framerate. The 4Mbps can be seen here ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75i4V...ature=youtu.be ) and has a few dropped frames, due to HDD load with the game runningoff and recording onto the same drive. With both of these the CPU utilization increased by 10% over the baseline run. So a 955 should be able to eat such a load (I'm only running a Haswell i3 the difference is far from large).

All in all I'd say that OBS is a decent way to go - especially for the buy-in cost! It probably wants a bit more fiddling with bitrates and recording to a different codec like lagarith lossless rather than h.264 all of which OBS supports very easily. Depending on the length of the recordings and the ram available, you could probably have a setup where the files are buffered via a ramdisk to prevent HDD saturation.

That is brilliant to know, will give that a try then.

Amusingly his youthful ability to knacker a machine means he has an old 500GB D: drive in there from a previous Windows install which could be perfect for recording to

[MrJim]

I've used FRAPS & Afterburner before. The free version of FRAPS leaves a watermark on the video, which is a bit annoying, but I guess they just want to encourage people to buy it, which is fair enough. Afterburner worked fairly well, but it noticeably reduced the performance of the PC, & I had to limit the resolution to 1280x720 uncompressed; the files it created were consequently pretty huge, so I had to compress them down to a more manageable size using Handbrake.

[Scainer]

I was trying to use Afterburner but it never seemed to work. I then found out that it was because it only does 32-bit games. Maybe I was doing something wrong or there is a fix to get around it, but in the end I tried Dxtory.

I was only wanting to find a program because being with AMD I had nVidia lovers throwing trash at me.
I came across http://www.radeonpro.info but never tested it out.

Back to Dxtory.
I found a review that showed that with the lagarith codec it was marginally superior to nVidia's solution, and both far superior than FRAPS.